Free The Princess and the Peer by Tracy Anne Warren

I am always happy to perform in a group. That way my wealth of mistakes may be concealed by the others.”
    Catching the twinkle in his gaze, she thought he must be teasing, although she did not know him well enough to be sure.
    “And what of you, Miss White? Are you musical?”
    She considered the question, not entirely sure how to respond. At age six, she’d been led into the music room in her father’s palace, seated in front of a harpsichord and told to play. As the years and teachers passed by, she had mastered a satisfactory repertoire of pieces, enough to entertain when the occasion required. As for any genuine talent or true love, she couldn’t in all conscience make such a claim.
    Now Mercedes… she played like an angel, the music seeming to radiate from her very soul. Hearing her play was like being in the presence of God himself.
    Realizing that Lord Lyndhurst still awaited an answer, she turned her attention back to him. “I am versed in several instruments, chief among them the pianoforte and the harp,” she said. “But like you, my efforts are vastly improved when I may blame my errors on someone else.”
    Nick grinned, his stormy gray eyes turned silver with accord. “In that case, perhaps we should brave the dour glares of my ancestors. Then again, mayhap once you see them, you’ll wish you’d chosen the tea.”
    “I should much enjoy seeing your forebears, moldering and otherwise.”
    “Never say you were not warned,” he advised.
    Reaching across the dining table, he picked up one of the large silver candelabras that sat there, its nine beeswax candles blazing with light. The orange-tipped flames wavered madly at being so abruptly disturbed, but soon calmed enough to burn brightly again.
    Extending his free arm, Nick invited Emma to take it.
    Silently, she laid her palm on the smooth warmth of his sleeve, aware of the muscled firmness of his arm underneath.
    The portrait room, she soon discovered, took up the entire length of the rear, first-floor gallery. Shrouded in a thick, inky darkness, the shadows grudgingly gave way to the light cast by the candelabra Nick held. The chamber was elegant, paneled in walnut and expanses of rich, watered scarlet silk. On the surrounding walls hung myriad paintings with their dozens of oil-rendered faces gazing out from their frames.
    One visage in particular caught Emma’s attention. The man had a long, stern face and a Vandyke beard, his eyes the same deep gray as Nick’s. On his head sat an elaborately plumed hat. A black velvet doublet stretched taut over his chest, with the rest of his costume composed of full velvet pantaloons, hose, and pointed leather shoes. His right hand rested on a heavy, bejeweled sword at his hip, the action suggesting that he intended to draw it should anyone be foolish enough to test him.
    “I see you’ve noticed the first earl,” Nick remarked as he gazed upon the figure. “Rumor has it he was one of Henry VIII’s secret assassins. Made a career out of stabbing, poisoning, and compiling evidence, truthful and otherwise, that was used to implicate enemies of the Crown and other chosen rivals. They say he interrogated those associated with Anne Boleyn, his actions helping send her to her death. Yet somehow, despite the perilous times, he managed to keep his own head and gain an earldom in the process. Not very nice, was he?”
    “No,” she mused thoughtfully, “but attempting to appease kings can sometimes make men do vile, reprehensible things—particularly when the monarch is a law unto himself. Your parliament is a most interesting institution that apparently provides an effective means of curbing the worst of such excesses.”
    Excesses that, until the past two generations, had been part of the fabric of her own country’s autocratic monarchy.When her father had ascended to the throne thirty years before, he’d enacted the beginnings of reform, but nothing that anyone would consider sweeping. Two years ago,